Gone Fishing? Gone Ranching? Gone to Sea Ranch

Best Mini-Vacay Ever

It was a miracle!. Work-a-holic Handsome Hubby hit the pause button and we “got gone” to Sea Ranch, Ca for a four-day vacation. Were we in for a treat!

And in honor of HH taking some vacation time, I’m switching things up a bit too.

Hence this brief change-of-pace travelogue complete with photos.

Still new to the San Francisco Bay area, we kept hearing about the delights of Sea Ranch from all our friends. “You’ve got to go,” they said/admonished each time we asked for short car trip recommendations. Those words have doomed many an unwary vacationer, but not this time. How glad we are that we listened!

Sea Ranch, Sea World, It Ain’t

Sea Ranch – or Sea World as I kept erroneously telling people we were headed to – is as close to beach heaven as I’ve ever been to. (And, as much as HH is a work-a-holic, I am a serious beach-a-holic. I have, in fact, made a lifetime study of finding every divine beach on the planet a personal obsession!)

First developed in the mid-1960s, Sea Ranch – NOT Sea World – is located about 100 miles from San Francisco. You get there via heart-stopping narrow roads carved out of steep mountains that at one point had us above the clouds, just like when you’re in an airplane!

Spread over 10 miles extending only one mile inland from the water, the homes are mixed in amid windswept, misted forested hills, grassy meadows, overlooking the rocky shoreline.

An Environmentalist’s and a Homeowner’s Delight

A planned community, Sea Ranch came to fruition as part of the new consciousness of the environment and helped coin a new term – “ecology” architecture. The notion of “living lightly on the land” is central to the project. Homes adhere to strict building terms mandating that structures are built in “territorial partnership” with the land and construction materials are drawn from nature: “rough and simple.” (The Sea Ranch: Concept & Covenant)